A love letter to Lucas, Age 5

My sweet baby Lucas, you are FIVE years old today!

Lucas, you are growing up waaaaaay too quickly. Not only are you five years old, but you are a clever and advanced for five, so much so that sometimes we forget you’re still wee. And I know for a fact you think you’re a peer to your older brothers, age-gap be damned.

Lucas, you are a sweet, loving and independent fellow who knows his own mind. Your two favourite things are drawing and jigsaw puzzles, although you like crafts, playdough and video games a lot, too. You go through reams of paper each week, drawing Sonic and puffles and creepers and Willie the cat and whatever else catches your creative fancy. You’re just learning your letters, so what was an independent act is now a joint effort as we spell and you write your captions carefully (and often backwards).

You are half way through your first year at school and you seem to love it. You especially love your teachers, and are disconcerted when there’s a substitute in the classroom. Your mates are Cole and Logan and Rachel and Owen, but your best friend seems to be Meg from daycare. You are impatiently counting the days until full-day kindergarten next year, when you get to go to school all day long like your big brothers, but I love our Wednesday afternoons together and I will deeply miss them when you’re at school all day. You’re a great companion on our afternoon errands, and I am so grateful for the time we have been able to spend together.

This year, you will have your first big-boy birthday party at A Gym Tale – a little bit delayed, but you’ve showed your usual patience with even that. You are very excited about the super-hero theme, and have said that for your birthday dinner today you want your favourite meal: breakfast with bacon and eggs, toast and homefries, and a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and colourful letters on it.

You love music and listening to songs on the iPod. You also love games, online and off, and hold your own playing Uno and Yahtzee and Catan Junior with the family. You don’t have much patience for being babied anymore, even though you still have one foot firmly in preschooler land. Thankfully, you still love Max and Ruby, for example, and Bubble Guppies and Toopy and Binoo, and you still play happily in with your toys in an imaginative world of your own making.

You love the library and books of all sorts. This year, we’ve enjoyed discovering the world of Mr Putter and Tabby, and Henry and Mudge, and a slew of Robert Munsch books. And to my amazement, you’ve lately started reading to ME at night, carefully sounding out the words in the first books of the BOB series of books for beginning readers.

Of all the boys, I think you loved our cruise this past fall the best. Six months later, you still mention it randomly and out of the blue every now and then: “I miss the boat Mommy. When can we go on another cruise?” You also very much miss our “Manotick pool” this long winter, but after October or November you at least stopped asking about it weekly. You also started swimming lessons this year, and of course you loved them.

You are a sweet and loveable boy, Lucas. You are generous with your hugs and kisses, and you seem to be slowly overcoming your deep shyness with strangers. You battle fiercely with your brothers on occasion, especially Simon, and you are a relentless snitch! You are also loquacious and imaginative, and have a wonderful appreciation for a good knock-knock joke.

My sweet Lucas, you bring joy and sunshine into our lives every single day. I still can’t quite believe you’re not a toddler in diapers any more – wasn’t that just yesterday? You’re growing into a fine young boy and we are very proud of you.

Happy birthday, my darling Lucas!! We love you!